some
=20
Personally i find i can get about of useful results from yahoo, but not from bing. Bing has always produced mediocre to miserable results for = me. I guess i should try duckduckgo sometime.
?-)
[...]
Really smart advertising would be to find out what else people who searched for XYZ might desire to have. Ain't happening here.
Yes, I did notice. I also noticed that the suggestions were rather far away from my tastes. So if they based this targeting on tracking info then, sorry, they've failed.
Sure, but at some point in life such data has to be mined and put to use. In good old American, it has to begin generating a profit. The amount of unsolicited email I received is close to zero and the "you might also like" sections are usually off. Way off.
[...]
Sure they will. But users have actively or passively consented. That's different.
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Strangely, that doesn't happen here. On the search engines I am using right now there are no such supplier suggestions.
Because then I would have at least had to receive some targeted links, dealerships and such. And I haven't.
It doesn't coincide, people seem to get different result. But the results make no sense. On the part of advertizers that wouldn't be very smart.
I have that generally turned off. But might have to install something to selectively turn it on. OTOH, if some script kiddie wants to runs a script just to hyperlink then the information to be gleaned from there is unlikely going to be worth it.
So how would my AP reveal in any way that we like Japanese food?
All I can tell you is that for my eyeballs it sure didn't work.
Minor problem here: They won't find me on Facebook :-)
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
I haven't tried any download ones because I don't know whether they are safe or might contain trojans. How does one know which ones are safe?
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Entirely possible! Joerg is trying to solve a *specific* problem. I can't solve that problem for him -- I can't inspect or explore his system. So, all *I* can do is offer background information that he, hopefully, can extract relative information for his particular case.
The above discussion was a consequence of the "avoid cookies" issue raised earlier.
I find many folks aren't aware of the mechanisms used on-line... I had a friend once beat his chest about how secure the N-bit encryption he was using for online transactions and how little risk it posed for his credit card information to be intercepted. Yet, he'd never considered his defense against spyware/malware creeping onto his computer from his *insecure* transactions. Intercepting his data
*before* it was passed through the secure tunnel."Ooops!"
There are a *lot* of smart people out there with various benign and malevolent motivations. Keeping up with all of the technology is *more* than a full-time job! (e.g., my solution is simply to avoid the issue entirely :> )
Another friend boasted about how cryptic his password was for his computer. "I don't use any common words, it's a mixture of upper and lower -case, a few 'random' digits (i.e., not 4,
2, or 8, etc.) and some punctuation marks!"In 6 minutes, I was able to tell him what it was. "Ooops!" A case of knowing *enough* to give you confidence that you actually know it ALL! :<
Ok, just to be sure I ran the Symantec tidserv virus detector tool. The diagnosis was negative, no virus was detected.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Symantec?
-- You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.
If you're willing to run Windows, you already trust the folks that make MSE. And the price is right.
Spybot search and destroy is fine in a different direction, but definitely has had fake sites trying to sound like it (the fake ones seem to be deprecated in search results at the moment - at least my search results.) This is the real place.
Still, MSE is quite possibly the best bet for regular use at this point. Sneer if you like, but after 20-odd years MS finally figured out something they should have figured out 20-odd years ago. But don't leave it fighting with Symantec - one or the other, not both at the same time.
-- Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.
Then there is 'Hijack This!' to see what is really running on the computer.
-- You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.
For the virus scanner Microsoft Security Essentials is free, unobtrusive and fast (as these things go). Free download from Microsoft.
If the first google link does not take you there that is a definite sign you are infected!
I also like the Sysinternals "autoruns" tool, also now from microsoft. Tells you about all the junk that runs at startup and lets you selectively disable it.
-- John Devereux
Isn't there also a rootkit detector therein? (or, did I fetch that from elsewhere...)
It is true there is a whole suite of useful looking stuff from the same source, but I am not as familiar with the others,
I run linux on my own machines so probably shouldn't be giving out windows "advice" anyway... but I do end up fixing other peoples windows installations fairly regularly, as do we all I expect :(
-- John Devereux
Is this better than the commercial Antivirus Programs? The downside of trying any of this is that you have to first un-install the whole anitivirus chebang that's already on the PC.
Anyhow, to be sure I am currently running Microsoft's most recent "Malicious Software Removal Tool". If that doesn't find anything then I doubt that Security Essentials is going to find a virus. So far it hasn't found any infections.
Thanks for the hint, I didn't know Microsoft was offering anything there with a good reputations, considering the debacle they had with IE security holes in the past. But maybe they are improving.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
That's the company with the Norton tools.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
I think in fact the commercial ones would tend to be more thorough, but also an order of magnitude more intrusive. Many genuine antivirus products are worse malware than what they protect against IMO. All the pop-up ads, extortion to buy, nag screens, updates, system slowdowns and failures.
It seems to have a good reputation (and I am no Microsoft fan).
One more thing you could try is create a new user and log in as them.
-- John Devereux
I forgot to say try the same search from another machine, at least this might convince you there is something wrong (or not) with yours.
-- John Devereux
Meantime I read some reviews and they were rather mixed, like this:
I did, and it is different. However, lots of sites flat-out refuse access because I have things turned off that they want to use (and I am not letting that guard down with all that rogue stuff on the web). So instead of a redirect I get a ... blank screen.
By now the Microsoft malware scanner is almost through my C: drive which is where all SW resides. It hasn't found a thing.
After that I'll reinstall the browser, maybe that broke.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
No sneering on my part, Microsoft sometimes does create really useful software. Like MS-Works (Version 6.0 and older). Or (don't laugh ...) MS-Paint. It's incredible what you can do with such a simple program and neither Works nor Paint ever crashed on me. Same for Office-97 which is of almost cast-iron quality.
I ran the "MS Malicious Software Removal Tool" since the full suite is incompatible with my normal virus protection software. Long story short it found ... nothing, nada, zilch.
Ok, I can give Spybot S&D a chance as well but must first figure out if compatible with my virus protection SW. I doubt it'll find anything though because both Symantec and Microsoft scan software came up dry, and those are rather professional companies when it comes to this stuff.
Looks like I am still at square one here :-(
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
The ones that I clean out of every computer I repair.
-- You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.
Professional in the sense of getting money out of people. As far as doing a good job at it, I'm in full agreement with Michael - Norton is more or less a virus itself. Likely more. I had moved to other systems (Clam, AVG, some others I forget the name of) before MSE came out, and now tend to just slam on MSE, and make sure it's happily updating itself and hasn't got another antivirus to fight with. But that's for starting with a clean system.
Try the "scan on startup" mode of SS&D (after it gets its full plate of updated definitions.)
As others have suggested, try another system, but presumably you haven't got one handy or you'd have done that already. When I get to the point of throwing up my hands at a windows (or Mac, or *nux, for that matter) system, I format the disk and reinstall the OS.
Another system is also the way to find the more subtle Windows infestations - pull the disk from the suspect system and check it (as a non-boot disk) on a known good system with known good antivirus. With clam, you can even check it on a linux system where the windows junk won't run (but can be found by clam.) But reinstalling clean will hammer those too, and only takes one system and the install media - then get system updated and the AV up to date and check your backup media before restoring.
And since we're dragging through the dirt of my day job, you DO have backups? Plenty of backups? Stored in different places? That you know are good? Very few people can answer yes to all that barrage, and it hurts like heck when things go kerflooey and no usable (or useful) backup can be found (or they were all in three "different places" in one house that's burned to the ground.)
I do electronics because I enjoy working on things that are not entirely intangible, which sums up most of my day job. Finding an electronics day job that doesn't require also relocating and burning a crapload of sweat equity seems to be unlikely, so I play with stuff and find the occasional moonlighting job to have fun with.
-- Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.
I have taken to imaging the drives on my machines just after OS install. Again after all drivers and updates. And again after installing "whatever" applications.
The image files are small -- compared to the *hours* (days?) that it takes to reinstall everything "from the originals" (i.e., it boils down to how quickly you can copy the image back onto the host's disk -- MANY times faster than the initial install(s)!)
Imaging the systems gives you a great backup for the system sans "user data". Burn to DVD or an external drive (I seem to have external drives *everywhere*).
I only store backups of finished projects off-site. If we have a fire/flood and the backups in the fire-retardant safe don't survive, worrying about finishing the "current project" will probably be so far down on the ToDo list as to make it insignificant.
More important is financial and medical records (in the safe deposit box).
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